Redirect Tests

A redirect test sends visitors assigned to a variant to a completely different URL. It’s the right pattern when the change you want to test is too large to express as inline CSS or JS — a full landing-page redesign, a different funnel entirely, a holiday-themed product page vs the regular one.

This guide covers when to use redirects, how Split Test Pro implements them, and the SEO discipline that keeps your search rankings safe.

When to Use a Redirect

Reach for a redirect when:

• You’re testing two distinct pages that share little markup. Editing one to look like the other via CSS/JS would be a thousand selectors.
• The variant is already built and live at its own URL — a new landing page, an alternate product detail page, an experimental funnel.
• You want to test the entire end-to-end experience, including JavaScript bundles and analytics setup that differ between the two pages.

Don’t use a redirect when:

• The change is small or visual. Use a CSS variant.
• The change involves logic on the same URL. Use a JS variant.
• You want to test only part of the page. Redirects move the visitor entirely.

How a Redirect Variant Works

In the Variants tab, each variant has a Redirect URL field. Fill it in for the variants you want to send away; leave it blank on the control.

When a visitor is bucketed into a redirect variant:

1. The script reads the variant’s redirect_url field.
2. It assigns window.location.href = redirect_url immediately, before any other variant content applies.
3. The browser navigates to the new URL.

The redirect happens early in page load, before the visitor sees the original page. There’s a brief delay while the second page loads — visitors who were going to the control just see their original page; visitors going to a variant see the original briefly before the redirect kicks in.

A Worked Example

You want to test your default product page (/products/widget) against a redesigned version (/products/widget-v2).

Targeting:

• URL part: Path
• Operator: Equals
• Value: /products/widget

Variants:

Variant	CSS	JS	Redirect URL
Control (A)	(empty)	(empty)	(empty)
Variant B	(empty)	(empty)	/products/widget-v2

When a visitor lands on /products/widget, half stay on the original; half are redirected to /products/widget-v2.

The SEO Trap (and How to Avoid It)

The biggest risk with redirect tests is search engines indexing your variant page as a duplicate of your control page, splitting your ranking signals or worse, ranking the variant.

Add noindex to the variant page

On the destination page (/products/widget-v2 in the example), add a robots meta tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

This tells search engines not to index the variant. The visitors you redirect there won’t be affected — only crawlers will.

Use a canonical URL

If the variant page is structurally similar to the control, also set a canonical link to the control:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/products/widget" />

This tells search engines that the control is the authoritative version even if both pages get crawled.

Tracking Conversions on the Redirect Destination

For Shopify stores, the Web Pixel runs on every storefront page including redirected ones, so funnel events keep flowing. No extra setup.

For HTML sites, make sure the Split Test Pro snippet is also installed on the destination page — your conversion event needs to fire on the page where the conversion happens, not just on the source. If your destination page is a third-party domain you don’t control, redirect tests aren’t a great fit (you can’t track conversions there).

Things That Don’t Work With Redirects

• CSS or JS variants on the same variant. Once a redirect fires, the visitor leaves the page. Any other variant content on a redirecting variant is dead code.
• Redirect chains. Don’t redirect the destination page to yet another URL. The browser supports it but you’re adding latency for no reason and confusing analytics.
• Loops. If you target /a and redirect to /b, don’t also have an experiment that targets /b and redirects to /a. The visitor will bounce. Split Test Pro’s conflict warning catches the URL overlap, but it’s worth being explicit: redirect tests are exclusive on a URL.

Reading Results for a Redirect Test

Results work the same way as any other experiment — sessions and conversions are attributed to the variant the visitor was bucketed into, regardless of which URL they ended up on. The Sessions count for a redirect variant counts visitors who landed on the source and were sent to the destination, not visitors who arrived at the destination directly.

Cleaning Up After a Winner

If your redirect variant wins:

1. Apply the destination page’s content to your default URL — i.e., make /products/widget look like /products/widget-v2 by editing your theme/site directly. Don’t keep the experiment running indefinitely just to maintain the redirect.
2. Either delete the source URL /products/widget-v2 or set up a permanent 301 server-side redirect for any backlinks that may have accumulated.
3. Remove the noindex from the now-default page so it’s indexable.

Next Steps

• For inline changes, see: CSS Variants and JavaScript Variants.
• Set up clean targeting that won’t accidentally fire your redirect on the destination page: URL Targeting.
• Avoid clobbering an existing test on the destination page: Running Multiple Experiments.